Originally published at The Catholic Thing
The Cambridge historian Richard Rex has noted that the first great crisis in Christianity was over the nature of the Trinity, especially over the nature of Christ, hence the early Christological heresies. The second great crisis, associated with the Reformation, was over the nature of the Church. This entailed the Protestant attack on sacramentality and the sacred hierarchy. The third great crisis, Rex observes, the one we are enduring today, is over the nature of the human person. Here the concrete issues revolve around the fact of sexual difference. Does the difference between masculinity and femininity have any theological significance?
